Darkness swallows everything at first—thick and complete, like someone dipped the entire world in ink.
No sound.
No walls creaking.
No dragging footsteps.
Just silence.
I don't know how long I stand there, suspended between breaths. It could be a second, a minute, an hour. In this place, time is loose—elastic, stretched thin until it loses meaning.
Then, slowly… something begins to return.
A hum.
Faint.
Delicate.
Almost melodic.
At first I think it's coming from the walls, but no. It's inside my head. Like someone humming directly into my skull. The tune is familiar, one I've sung a thousand times—rocking my daughter to sleep on long, exhausted nights.
My breath catches.
That's her lullaby.
But not sung by her.
Sung by a deeper voice.
A man's voice.
Soft.
Loving.
Wrong.
"No…" I whisper. "Stop—stop it—"
The humming grows louder. It curls around me like smoke, warm and suffocating. My hands fly to my ears, but it doesn't help. The sound vibrates through my bones.
Then—another sound bleeds in from above it.
A bell.
Ding.
Ding.
Ding.
I know that bell.
It's the hospital elevator chime.
But it's layered… two echoes at once.
One echo: bright, clear, the familiar sound from the real hospital where I work.
The second: warped, distant, drowning in static—the version from the ruined hospital in the Boundary Land.
Two identical sounds.
From two different worlds.
Overlapping.
Competing.
My pulse spikes.
"What's happening…" I whisper, turning in the darkness.
The darkness shimmers.
Then—splits.
Not fully.
Not like a door opening.
More like a reflection forming in black glass.
I squint, stepping slowly closer.
And then I see it.
The hallway… the REAL hospital hallway… wavers into view in front of me like a translucent mirage.
White lights.
Clean floors.
Bright posters.
The nurses' station lit up.
I see myself—only for a second.
A reflection of me rushing down that very hall, scrubs rustling, hair tied back, ID badge bouncing against my chest.
Me from moments before the distortion began.
My hand reaches out automatically, trembling.
My fingertips graze the image—
And it ripples like water.
I gasp and jerk my hand back.
The reflection shatters, breaking into shards of light that rain downward, dissolving before they hit the cracked floor under my feet.
Then darkness seals shut again.
My throat pulses painfully.
The worlds are bleeding into each other.
He said this would happen.
He said I "walked too far."
I blink rapidly, trying to steady myself, but the darkness begins to split again—not one reflection this time, but multiple, flickering like broken film.
The real hospital.
The Boundary hospital.
Both layered over each other, fighting for dominance.
Two worlds, two realities, colliding like broken mirrors trying to create one image.
The air vibrates, crackling with static.
A loud crash echoes down the hall.
I spin.
To my left—
I see the real-world supply cart tipping over, falling to the floor in a mess of gauze and metal.
To my right—
I see the same moment in the Boundary version: the cart rotted, half-collapsed, spilling rusted surgical tools and shattered glass.
The same event.
Two versions.
Playing at once.
"No," I breathe. "No, this isn't possible."
But it is.
Because it happens again.
A voice shouts down the hall: "Jenny! Where'd you go?!"
A real-world coworker's voice.
Then layered beneath it:
Another voice, identical but distorted, echoing through the dead halls of the Boundary realm.
Two voices.
One real.
One haunted.
Both calling for me.
I turn in circles, disoriented as the two realities flicker—like someone flipping between channels of the same nightmare.
"HELP!" I scream. "I'M HERE!"
My voice echoes normally in the real hospital.
But in the Boundary version, it stretches unnaturally—drawn out, warped, fading into a long, hollow moan that doesn't even sound like me.
The air around me crackles again.
The worlds overlap faster now—images popping, distorting, merging, collapsing.
The clean hospital walls flash—
Then peel into decayed ones.
Bright ceiling lights flicker to darkness—
Then return—
Then die again.
My stomach twists as vertigo hits.
It feels like I'm standing in both worlds at once—my body split between two realities, pulled apart at the edges.
"STOP!" I shout, gripping my head.
The air pulses like a heartbeat.
Then everything freezes.
For one horrifying moment, both realities perfectly align—the ruined hallway laid over the clean one like a transparent overlay.
I see nurses walking through decayed walls.
I see abandoned wheelchairs sitting in the middle of their path.
I see a collapsed ceiling dripping mold above a bright, safe corridor.
And then—
I see my daughter.
She's standing at the end of the superimposed hallway, tiny hands holding the straps of her backpack, her dark hair falling into her eyes.
But her face…
Her face moves between worlds.
One version—
My real, healthy daughter.
The other—
A sickly, pale version of her, eyes dark, hollow, belonging to the Boundary realm.
Two versions.
One child.
Split between worlds.
"Baby?" I choke out.
She lifts a hand toward me—
Both versions doing the same motion.
I take one step toward her.
The floor buckles.
The worlds split violently again, pulling her away—one image ripped to the left, the other to the right—shredded like paper in a storm.
"NO!" I scream, rushing forward.
But the floor beneath me collapses like the whole building exhales.
I fall forward, landing hard on my knees. Pain shoots through my legs.
The real-world and Boundary-world hallways peel apart like two layers of skin tearing.
And then—
Everything stops.
The darkness seals.
The lights die.
The real hospital vanishes.
My daughter vanishes.
Only the ruined, ghost-world hospital remains.
I choke on a sob.
My daughter is gone.
Not taken by a person.
Taken by the echo.
Swallowed between the worlds.
"My baby…" I whisper, my voice splintering.
Then the intercom crackles overhead.
And his voice—my ghost husband's voice—pours through the speakers like warm, poisonous honey:
"Two worlds can only hold one child, Jenny."
A pause.
"Come find her… if you can survive what comes next."
The intercom clicks off.
And the lights go out again.
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